Text 10618, 163 rader
Skriven 2005-03-30 00:17:28 av Ed Hulett (1:123/789.0)
  Kommentar till text 10537 av Ed Connell (1:379/1.6)
Ärende: Bo Gritz
================
Ed Connell -> Ed Hulett wrote:
 EC> Hey, Ed.

 EH>>>> Just how did the court "find" she wished to starve to death? Did they
 EH>>>> ask her? No. Her husband found some others, so-called friends of her's,
 EH>>>> who testified that she told them. So, if I get enough people to agree
 EH>>>> with me, I could have someone starved to death too?

 EH>>>> What is so important that she should be kiiled? Will it make things
 EH>>>> better that she be starved to death? Actually, as Vern has said, she
 EH>>>> will dehydrate long bfore she starves to death. Death by dehydration is
 EH>>>> a long and painful death. Why must she be put through such pain? Why
 EH>>>> not just put a pistol to her head and pull the trigger?

 EH>>>> If isn't no real big deal to starve a human being to death, why are
 EH>>>> people jailed all the time for starving animals? If the person owns the
 EH>>>> animal, what's different for them to decide to starve that animal
 EH>>>> than what Michael Shiavo is doing to his wife?

 EH>>>> All the rationalization you do doesn't change the fact that Terri
 EH>>>> Shiavo is being killed rather than being allowed to die with dignity.
 EH>>>> There is *NO* dignity for someone to die of dehydration or
 EH>>>> starvation.

 EC>>> If it were all that dignified, there would be a great demand that this
 EC>>> be the means for execution of criminals.

 EH>> You got it.

 EH>> If she had a living will signed and notorized and it was just a matter
 EH>> of disconnecting her from a resperator, it would be different. Even if
 EH>> she had told others that she didn't want heroic measures taken to keep
 EH>> her alive, it would be different.

 EH>> A feeding tube is *NOT* heroic measures.

 EC> Yer preachin' to the choir - uh - yer right!

Heh heh... I guess it's that emotionalism John was talking about. :-)

 EC> I hope you don't mind if I use this as a vehicle for a George Will column
 EC> about - and here's where it is on-topic - about judges.     Bah!  There, I
 EC> feel better - but not a lot better. <g>
 EC> ======================================
 EC> GEORGE F. WILL

 EC> (c) 2005, Washington Post Writers Group

 EC> In 1992, before delivering the Supreme Court's ruling in an abortion case,
 EC> Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has a penchant for self-dramatization, stood
 EC> with a journalist observing rival groups of demonstrators and mused:
 EC> "Sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or
 EC> Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line." Or perhaps you are a would-be
 EC> legislator, a dilettante sociologist and freelance moralist, disguised as
a
 EC> judge.

 EC> LAST TUESDAY Kennedy played those three roles when, in yet another 5-4
 EC> decision, the court declared it unconstitutional to execute persons who
 EC> murder when under 18. Such executions, it said, violate the Eighth
Amendment
 EC> proscription of "cruel and unusual" punishments because ... well,
Kennedy's
 EC> opinion, in which Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David
Souter
 EC> and John Paul Stevens joined, is a tossed salad of reasons why those five
 EC> think the court had a duty to do what state legislatures have the rightful
 EC> power and, arguably, the moral responsibility to do.

 EC> Although the court rendered an opposite decision just 16 years ago,
Kennedy
 EC> says the nation's "evolving standards of decency" now rank such executions
 EC> as cruel and unusual. One proof of this, he says, is:  Of the 38 states
that
 EC> have capital punishment, 18 bar executions of those who murder before age
 EC> 18, five more than in 1989. So he constructs a "national consensus"
against
 EC> capital punishment of juvenile offenders by adding a minority of the
states
 EC> with capital punishment to the 12 states that have decided "that the death
 EC> penalty is inappropriate for all offenders."

 EC> But "inappropriate" is not a synonym for "unconstitutional." Kennedy
simply
 EC> assumes that those 12 states must consider all capital punishment
 EC> unconstitutional, not just wrong or ineffective or more trouble than it is
 EC> worth - three descriptions that are not synonymous with
"unconstitutional."

 EC> While discussing America's "evolving standards of decency," Kennedy
 EC> announces: "It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of
 EC> international opinion against the juvenile death penalty." Why is that
 EC> proper when construing the U.S. Constitution?

 EC> He is remarkably unclear about that. He says two international conventions
 EC> forbid executions of persons who committed their crimes as juveniles.
That,
 EC> he thinks, somehow illuminates the meaning of the Eighth Amendment.

 EC> KENNEDY, self-appointed discerner of the national consensus on penology,
 EC> evidently considers it unimportant that the United States attached to one
of
 EC> the conventions language reserving the right "to impose capital punishment
 EC> .. for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age."

 EC> The United States never ratified the other convention Kennedy cites. In
his
 EC> extra-judicial capacity as roving moralist, Kennedy sniffily disapproves
of
 EC> that nonratification as evidence that America is committing the cardinal
sin
 EC> of being out of step with "the world community."

 EC> Kennedy the sociologist says "any parent knows" and "scientific and
 EC> sociological studies" show that people under 18 show a "lack of maturity"
 EC> and an "underdeveloped sense of responsibility" and susceptibility to
 EC> "negative influences" and a weak aptitude for "cost-benefit analysis."

 EC> All this means, he says, that young offenders "cannot with reliability be
 EC> classified among the worst offenders."

 EC> Well. Is it gauche to interrupt Kennedy's seminar on adolescence with some
 EC> perhaps pertinent details? The 17-year-old in the case the court was
 EC> considering bragged about planning to do what he then did: He broke into a
 EC> woman's home, put duct tape over her eyes and mouth, wrapped her head in a
 EC> towel, bound her limbs with electrical wire, then threw her off a railroad
 EC> trestle into a river where, helpless, she drowned.

 EC> Justice Scalia, joined in dissent by Justices William Rehnquist and
Clarence
 EC> Thomas (Justice Sandra Day O'Connor dissented separately), deplores "the
new
 EC> reality that, to the extent that our Eighth Amendment decisions constitute
 EC> something more than a show of hands on the current Justices' current
 EC> personal views about penology, they purport to be nothing more than a
 EC> snapshot of American public opinion at a particular point in time (with
the
 EC> timeframes now shortened to a mere 15 years)."

 EC> Kennedy occupies the seat that 52 Senate Democrats prevented Robert Bork
 EC> from filling in 1987. That episode accelerated the descent into the
 EC> scorched-earth partisanship that was raging in the Senate Judiciary
 EC> Committee at the very moment Tuesday morning that Kennedy was presenting
the
 EC> court majority's policy preference as a constitutional imperative. The
 EC> committee's Democrats were browbeating another appellate court nominee,
 EC> foreshadowing another filibuster.

 EC> THE DEMOCRATS' standard complaint is that nominees are out of the
 EC> jurisprudential "mainstream." If Kennedy represents the mainstream, it is
 EC> time to change the shape of the river.

 EC> His opinion is an intellectual train wreck, but useful as a timely warning
 EC> about what happens when judicial offices are filled with injudicious
 EC> people.

Kennedy needs to resign. He's supposed to interpret law against the
constitution, not public opinion.

Ed

--- Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (Windows/20041206)
 * Origin:  (1:123/789.0)